


Drabbles - Justine

by lycomingst



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 03:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lycomingst/pseuds/lycomingst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have a special affection for Justine. I tried to do one of those 100 fic challenges for her. Of course, I didn't finish it, but here are the drabbles that I did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drabbles - Justine

**Sunshine**

These days, she avoided the daylight. She mostly kept the same hours they did. The monsters.

She found the sunshine irritating. The daytime air smelled wrong to her. Passing through the city streets, in sunlight, when normal people were about jarred her, gave her headaches. She wanted the midnight, wanted to prowl and hunt and kill.

The freckles on her skin faded. If her sister were alive, vibrant in sun-kissed health, it would be easy to tell them apart now. But she wasn't. So maybe the twins again were hard to distinguish between, because now Justine was pale as death.

 

**Monsters**

I knew what monsters were. I had killed them. Washed their dust out of my clothes. Off my face. Had scrubbed their remains from under my nails.

Then I met a different kind, one that sickened me to look at. A human working with a vampire. A traitor, betrayer.

He uses soft words, reasonable tones. How can his hand not itch to have the wooden stake in it that would send that demon to the hell it deserves? "You don't understand," he says. "Angel is different now."

Holtz understands; I understand. Demons should die, so should those who help them.

 

**First Love**

There were things to do after death. Housekeeping. Disposal and dispersal.  
Emptying out the cozy apartment in a good neighborhood so that life could go on it. Someone else's life, of course.

Justine gave away the furniture. She saved the books, drawings, dairies. She threw—it was a hurried, violent action—them all in boxes. She meant to lock them away.

A newspaper clipping fluttered out. Michael J. Fox. Julie's first crush. Justine never saw why. "He's short." She'd make Julie so mad. But they watch together when his show was on, as a ritual, like they were in church.

**Anger**

She'd been so mad at Julie. She remembered that later. Justine knew her sister was ignoring the message machine. Again.

The doorbell rang and Justine flung it open, ready to get Miss Julia holy hell for finally showing up. Wasn't her. Police. "Are you the sister of..." They talked a lot. Took her to the morgue. Showed her a pale body. _Could have been a mugging gone bad, they said. But they avoided her eyes._

One of them gave her a card. _You might want to talk to this officer. If you have questions. Later._

The card read: Kate Lockley

 

**Lonely**

They were dressed alike as babies. Once they found their voices, they never were. It didn't matter if their tastes differed; they knew each other's thoughts.

Their faces were so similar only the very familiar could see a difference. And people would ask, "So how's it feel to be twins?"

They got that a lot in school. Even the dumber adults would ask it sometimes. Justine and Julie would roll their eyes at each other. Get a clue. We've always been twins. How does it feel not to be?

Justine knows the answer to that one now. It feels lonely.

 

**Betrayal**

She should have felt it. Should have known. Instead of sleeping through the night, she should have bolted upright at 2:30AM, feeling like her life's blood was draining away. That was supposed to be the way of twins; they were one person split in two. Half of her died, why didn't she know?

 

But she slept deeply, soundly. _Was that her last good night of sleep?_ The next morning her coffee tasted good and strong. She never felt it, that now she was an only child.

It was an ordinary day.

She didn't even have a bad dream that night.

**Dawn**

We staggered in just before sun up. One of Holtz's recruits, the one with the scrap marks on his neck, was bouncing around the room, talking loud. _Sit down_ I said. He slid into a chair next to mine, jabbering away. How he'd never been so scared, that he was sure he'd been going to die. And didn't I think about dying?

I wanted to say, _I don't worry about it. I've seen my twin sister in a coffin. I know I'm going to make a good-looking corpse. _. Instead I told him to shut up and get some sleep.

 

**The Start**

When he pinned her hand to the table with the knife, at first there was only pain. Surprise and pain.

He wanted to test her commitment. Ok, then, he could watch this. He'd find her here whenever he came back. Whenever.

She found if she didn't move the hand, there was no new pain. Just a level of it she could get used to, could endure. She sweated. Wouldn't allow herself nausea. Or tears.

She didn't think of Julie. Only of Holtz and commitment and an acceptable amount of pain.

She lay her head on the table, gently, and waited.

**Resurrection**

She was not the musing sort. She liked things laid out plain and simple. What one of her teachers called, "straightforward". Justine kept that picture of herself, moving through life like a line drawn in a geometry problem.

But now she didn't sleep much. The hours she lay down in exhaustion but unable to slip away were filled with half dreams. Her dozing mind churned with never-settled questions.

She tossed and turned and wondered. About the reasons for things. Why Holtz got to come back, why vampires rose from their graves. Why there were second chances for everyone but Julia.

 

**Coffin**

When your loved one dies violently, the police take pictures of the scene where they found her. There's the autopsy. They want to have clear snaps of her wounds, scrapings from her fingernails, samples of her DNA. Then if they're mostly sure you didn't have anything to do with her being in their morgue, they give you her body.

And you get to shop. Would Julie like to rest eternally on pink satin or white silk? Be enclosed in brass on mahogany or silver on rosewood?

She had house downpayment money; I used it for someplace to call hers forever.

 

**Want**

Wesley kept her in a glaringly bright room for days after he captured her.. He would wake her if she fell asleep. She lost track of the days. Couldn't calculate them.

She was defiant for a time. Cursed and screamed at him. He never raised his voice to her. He gave her water, enough so she wouldn't dehydrate. Then clothes, a little food. When she cooperated.

She gave in; it didn't matter. Her hate wasn't strong enough anymore.

She bent to Wesley's want as she had to Holtz's. For as great as hers had been, theirs would always be greater.

**Choices**

"It's all about the actor's choices," Ms. Finebaum would say. Repeatedly. When Justine was in the dumb high school drama club, dressed in a gross costume in some play she never understood.

Ms F. (to her face, Furbottom, behind her back) explained how you could say the same thing so many different ways. The actor must think how to win over the audience.

In her approach to Wesley, to lull the suspicions of the baby-snatching vampire toady, Justine's chosen sincerity and neediness. And a knife. Her performance overwhelms him, bringing him to his knees. Her Ms. F. would be proud.

 

**Light**

When she was young she used to run. Up before sunrise, her lazy sister hissing at her to be quiet from her bed.

She felt she was watching the world come alive each day. With the light came the greeting of the birds. She could tell them apart by their songs. Violet-green swallow first, then others, thrushes, jays, crows.

Now she runs through graveyards while the moon looks down. Runs to catch and kill. Her world's turned upside down, but she's learned, even at midnight, she can listen to birds trill and sing.

She doesn't know their damned names, though.

 

**Chains**

If she thinks of her former life, there's sound and movement. Once there was sunlight but that fell away first; she remembers mostly the moon and heat rising from the pavement as the air cools.

There were dark places she hurried to be and dark plans she was part of . She has a memory of always running, feeling hungry vengeance nipping at her heels. Her life consisted of danger, decisions, heartbreak.

But that's all over.

Now there's only a three by four closet, a bucket, some chains and an angry British man who may or may not feed her.

 

**Lie**

It shouldn't have made a difference, really. His jumping through a wavering, pulsating hole, away from this time and this place, left her no better or worse than before he appeared here. He hadn't taken all the vampires with him. They were still around to stake. And with what she learned from him, she'd be better at it.

The two weeks after he left she spent drunk.

A thought she had, one that bobbed about, was about which lie was greater. Her devotion to her sister/ his promise of a future. But she was drunk and kept forgetting the answer.

 

**Parent**

Her mother did manage to get there, after all. Justine had a tough time tracking her down. She'd changed jobs, apartments, boyfriends since the last time they talked. If the police hadn't held the body for autopsy, Julia's mother wouldn't have made the funeral.

Justine offered her money for the plane ticket, but Lynn Anne said she'd take care of it. Her daughter couldn't help but think that Lynnie was going to relish telling the airline a story of sudden loss and grief to get a discount.

Lynnie took home all Julia's dresses that fit her, and the opal earrings.

 

**Silver**

They bought their first car together. An automatic, because Julie refused to learn stick. She said she might want to wave to friends and wanted a hand free.

The car was silver where it wasn't rust. The back seat upholstery was torn, the heater gave off a funny smell, but they loved that car. They'd squabble over whose turn it was to use it and only Justine remembered to put in oil.

One night, going to a party, it just stopped, never ran again. Went out for an evening of fun and never made it home. Kinda like Julie.

**Gold**

Julia, when they were 14, dyed her hair. Or rather, tried to bleach it. She thought she'd be golden like Madonna. Not red and freckled.

She stole money from their mother's purse for Clairol. Justine wouldn't help her, storming out when she saw that Julia had gone through with it. She didn't know how to say she wanted to stay twins.

Julie's hair turned to straw; their mother laughed at her. When her sister cried and cried, Justine sat on the bed beside her, telling her it would be okay. Both of them wore their hair very short that summer.

 

**Food**

Death leaves so many loose ends. If they had lived together, lived in a big house, Justine could have kept her sister's room as a shrine.

Throughout the years Justine could bring guests to her sister's bedroom and swing open the door. "I've kept it just as she left it," she'd say quietly.

But a rented apartment must be vacated. Must be emptied and cleaned. Julie was in a box; now her things are, too.

Some things aren't kept at all. Marshmallows, chocolate, graham crackers swept from the pantry. Sweet treats they shared.

Justine doesn't find them comfort food anymore.

 

**Hunger**

They told her she needed to see this certain detective. Said it to her off-hand, eyes turned away. When Justine wouldn't stop asking questions, the cops said, _ maybe you should see Kate Lockley._

Justine badgered her, too. _Tell me, tell me, tell me._ Kate doled out information. Testing how much Justine could take, would accept.

"There are _things_ that can't be arrested but can be killed."

"How?"

"You need wooden stakes, beheading swords. It helps to have Holy Water, crucifixes, good running shoes."

These were the ingredients for retribution; she added burning hatred to make the recipe her own.

 

**Music**

Feet pounding, gasping predator reaching for a prey that doesn't breathe at all.

Julia and Justine's mother's second or third husband (Justine is vague now) taught them a song. The girls sang it loud and out of tune, and when they got to this part, _these boots are going to walk all over you_, they had a dance move. In synch, they'd lift a foot and bring it down hard, on the word "you".

Now Justine's running through the graveyard, chasing her vampire, this song in her head; she plunges the stake on "you" and walks all over

 

**Villain**

What makes a good villain? Does Justine qualify?

Typically for villains she doesn't see herself in a bad light. Whatever horror she sowed among Angel's family and friends, she saw as justified. It never entered her mind she may have crossed to the dark side, like Darth Vader.

She didn't want world domination. The only superpower she'd choose is time travel, to go back to a life she understood. One where she had a sister.

So it's not likely she's an arch-fiend. Mark her down as not ambitious enough. Maybe she's just a lost woman. Half of a broken set.

 

**Sound**

After it was over, after she staked vampires, slit a throat, stolen a baby, lost her future, killed her decrepit champion, what was she to do next?

There was drinking, of course, and crying. There'd have been road rage, too, if she hadn't lost the car. Somewhere.

She needed clues to her life. She went to her storage locker, sat on a heaped-up pile of the past and listened to tapes Julie made. Julie liked the sound of her own voice.

As the batteries started to die, the voice slowed, distorted. There were no hidden messages that Justine could hear.

 

**Dusk**

Impatient for the day to end. Eyes that should be downcast slide up past cubicle walls to see the clock or check the sun's decline through the window. Lengthening shadows mean freedom.

Justine seldom sees this city sun-filled. At dawn she goes someplace quiet and dim. She sleeps where she's fallen. Later she awakes. Not late enough. The world must be dark or the demons won't come out.

She, too, watches the horizon. She, too, seeks the release that night will bring.

Cube farm prisoners and vampire hunters have one thing in common. They know that dusk is Happy Hour.

 

**Space**

Funny how you adjust to the space you have. When Lynnie, their mother, had latched on to a steady-income man, the twins lived in a big house. Hallways to run shrieking down, separate bedrooms. Once there was even a pool.

In bad times, they camped in a cheap motel, in one room. Lynnie would spend their money on her own clothes. "Advertising," she'd say to them.

Either kind of place was okay with the twins. They were together.

Now when Wesley opens her closet door to feed her, Justine shrinks back. She glimpses the world outside. It looks too big.

 

**Dreams**

He knows the demon world in LA. Knows somebody who'll know where she is. The scarred throat man can reach out anytime if he wants to trap her like an insect under a drinking glass.

He does, after he's thought through his plan.

One dark night, in one dark alley, he's behind her. A hand around her windpipe, a needle prick. She goes to sleep.

She has her recurrent dream. Never of him, but of Julia. Her throat red, sliced, not fanged. Struggling to speak but mute. Justine yells at her.

She wakes angry and naked in a closet.

 

**The Future**

At first sight Holtz thought her a man. No woman in his time, except a stage strumpet, wore breeches. And none fought vampires.

He found her in a graveyard, tussling with one newly-risen. Clumsily. Fighting inexperienced demons showed she recognized her level of skill. She might be intelligent and trainable. And after her kill she dispersed the creature's dust with savage boot kicks. Rage and passion. He wanted her to have that, too.

Why should he, brought here by a demon, stick at fighting with a woman. Better to think, O brave new world, that hath such people in it!

**Hero**

You _might_ say it was a romance.

Justine's going about her everyday life, sleeping (fitfully) in the day, staking vampires by night, when a steely-eyed stranger rides into town and gives her a whole new way to look at things.

They start spending all their time together. Soon, he's "pinned" her.

Pinned, but not like in 1940s' movie, with a fraternity keepsake clasped onto a pink angora sweater. Pinned, like driving a sharp object through her hand, fixing it to a table. She says that feeling pain is better than feeling nothing.

She's committed to him now. He's her hero.

 

**Puppet**

At first she spits at him when he opens the closet door. In return, he shuts it without giving her the food or water he has in his hand.

Soon she has no saliva to hurl. When he leaves the water glass, she gulps the liquid, turning it upside down to catch the last drops.

He never speaks.

Finally Justine says "So, you think you'll break me? Make me a vampire lover?

"No," he says coldly. "I don't care what you feel. I want you to tell me things. You were Holtz's puppet; now I want you to be mine."

 

**Colorless**

Holtz said to her that evil wasn't "black and white". She'd think on that in idle moments, lying on her mattress waiting for the sunset. Evil was gray?

Green was for envy, yes? She dressed Julie in green for her funeral. Sometimes she envied Julie for being at peace.

Red meant anger, danger, passion. Vampires made Justine see red. See how words and colors can be played with. As you while away the time before you can kill again.

But Blue is what she won't admit to feeling.

There was one thing that was Colorless. Distilled, pure, concentrated.

Her hatred.

**Time**

Change...

From being one of two. From being a confidante, a sounding board, a scolder, a joke-sharer, a sister, to being on your own, an only child.

Change...

From being an avenger, a justice seeker, a death-bringer whose blows are swift and sudden to being a follower, an order-taker, a torturer, a butcher.

Change...

From being a gloating Fury, a conspiratorial tormenter to being a thing in a closet.

Change...

From being a normal girl to a bereaved sister, to a maddened slayer, to a compliant helper, to an abandoned lover, to a weeping executioner, to, finally, a heart-broken woman.

 

**Death**

At a death, when there's a body to bury or burn, you have a wake.

You have in it in your small apartment because you never thought of saving up for this.

People come and say Julia was such fun to work with and they're really going to miss her and oh-my-god, you look just like her.

Your mother, Lynnie, tastes the white wine and says baby, you should have chilled this more. Everybody drinks it, though.

You hear laughter in the corner; you hope someone's telling a funny story about Julie.

They leave; you finish all the warm chardonnay.

 

**Child**

"Why do we need all this, these plans to find Angel's weak spots? He goes out alone, doesn't he? We find him when he does, overwhelm him, dust him," says Justine.

"For one thing, Angel would kill you all, if you cornered him. We already know his weakness: the child. We just need to find a way to it," Holtz answered her.

So Holtz sent Aubrey to Angel with a story about watching a child burn in the sun. Angel, now that he's a father, will imagine he understands the horror of it. Holtz, having done it, knows he cannot.

 

**And a few I wrote for "Open on Sunday".**

**Black**

She wears one of her sister's black dresses to the funeral. Julia was always the stylish one. Justine doesn't have to worry about the stain when her shaking hands spill a drink on it at the small gathering of friends she hosts afterward. Julie won't complain this time.

People murmur things to her, because death calls for quiet voices. If she doesn't hear all that they say, she doesn't ask them to repeat it. Because it doesn't matter. She can't think of anything that does.

The next day she rolls the dirty dress up and throws it in the trash.

**Lost**

When someone dies, people get confused.

They'd say to her, "Oh, so sorry to hear you lost your sister, Justine."

She wanted to say, "No, she isn't lost. Come with me; I'll show you where she is." And she could take them, if they wanted, to a wall with her sister's name on it.

"She's behind here, in a small box." Justine imagined saying.

Julie was always easily found. It was Justine who drifted, to anywhere, somewhere. Thinking only of staking vampires. And then afterwards, if she could, scuffing the earth, so that their dust scattered, was lost.

Like she was.

 

**After**

He was there and then he wasn't.

She felt like she was drowning. She couldn't catch her breath and her mind filled not with pictures of the life she led, but the one she was going to lead.  
He promised her Utah. There'd be him and her and the baby. Someplace to live where you couldn't even see your neighbors. There'd be cozy fires, animals to care for, laughter around the dinner table, hot summer nights. They'd watch this child grow, and maybe, more.

She looked at the place he'd been standing.

How could he leave and not take her?

**Remains**

When they were young and times were good, there'd be late night raids on the frig, outlandish sandwiches and shared secrets. Sometimes they were broke. Then, Lynnie, their mom, would give them a choice. Dinner at a fancy place, eat your fill, take nothing with you, skip out on the check. Or, stand in the charity line and save your applesauce cup and roll for breakfast tomorrow. Applesauce in plastic, the girls grew to hate the smell.

Now Justine's alone. There are no shared meals. No tidbits to take home. She eats if she remembers to.

She's a left-over sister.

**Lullaby**

Taking the baby from the dying man, she realized this was the scariest part for her. She had no experience with kids. Was she was holding it right?

She was taking the big old SUV, too. She wasn't sure how the damn baby seat worked. It'd be pathetic to be pulled over by cops for mishandling a baby while coming back from cutting a man's throat.

The baby cried. She turned on the radio. She sang loudly along with Faith,  
Can feel the magic floating in the air  
I can feel the magic floating in the air

The baby cried.


End file.
